Rob, Jan, Yannick, Pavel and our close collaborator Štěpán Janeček have returned, mostly unscathed, from our dry season expedition on Mt. Cameroon. They continued with our research on pollination systems, as well as lepidopteran diversity in the three higher elevations of the mountain. One of our other collaborators, Szabolcs Sáfián, joined us for two weeks to help with the lepidopteran work.
Štěpán setting a camera in the canopy of Syzygium staudtii.
This expedition has provided enormous amounts of data, especially within our pollination research. Over 250 plants were filmed for ±24 hours in order to record their visitors. In the coming months both Jan and Yannick will try to process these recordings (from both last expeditions), but initial checks have already sparked their enthusiasm due to visitation from a wide range of species, e.g. bats, sunbirds, sphingids and rodents.
Just within a month another part of our group (Vincent, Sylvain and Pavel) will already return to finally finish the lepidopteran data collection.